Saturday, August 16, 2014

The New York open line: Plus a return from journalism to political flackery and a knock on Sen. Boozman

DOUBLEDAY FIELD: The ballpark in Cooperstown is named for Abner Doubleday, despite all the disputation about the whos and wheres of baseball's origination. The hall of fame s here, that's certain.

I had a few minutes to get on the computer from Cooperstown, N.Y., though it was hardly necessary with David Ramsey and Leslie Peacock's hard work today. Maybe I ought to leave permanently.

Anyway, the temperature is in the 60s here on the shores of Lake Otsego. Tourists throng the baseball card shops on the quaint Main Street in a beautifully preserved village. I saw "Carousel" today and will see "Ariadne auf Naxos" tomorrow at the Glimmerglass summer opera festival just down the road from Cooperstown. I also plan to get a picture of Brooks Robinson's plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame tomorrow morning before the music starts. I did pass through the Doubleday Stadium, a field of dreams where old-timers were playing a little pepper.

In the news:

* FLACKERY CALLS: The Asa Hutchinson campaign for governor announced today that KNWA co-anchor J.R. Davis was leaving TV news to become director of communications for the Republican's campaign. It won't be a jarring switch. He did TV news for a couple of years after doing communications work for Republican Rep. Steve Womack. Hey, Matt DeCample is going to be looking for new work soon. Maybe he could go back to TV at KNWA.

* RIPPING DR. NO: Republican Sen. John Boozman gets a thumping from an environmental group as one of the country's most dangerous congressmen when it comes to the environment. The link offers plenty of specifics. We've mentioned before his otherwise typical opposition to clean air controls got so bad at one point in congressional hearings that he hit TV.

When four former EPA Administrators who served under Republican Presidents recently testified in his committee, Boozman’s laughable response got him a climate change eye exam on the Daily Show. Boozman should stop listening to oil and gas interests, and support policies that keep his constituents healthy and that move us toward clean, abundant renewable energy sources for our future.

And, oops, I see I just stepped on David Ramsey's own closing notes. They follow:

* FERGUSON : Here's the latest, via ABC. The governor has declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice announced that it had opposed the release of a video that the Ferguson PD said showed Michael Brown involved in a robbery at a convenience store shortly before the shooting.

The final haggling with the feds over Arkansas Works — but much bigger changes are coming once Trump gets in the White House. /more/

In September, the governor announced his intention to use tobacco settlement funds to substantially reduce the 3,000-person waiting list. It will still likely happen, but there's one new wrinkle now that didn't exist three months ago: President-elect Donald Trump. /more/

GOP governors in states that expanded Medicaid want the coverage expansion to continue, but it's potentially on the chopping block with the election of Donald Trump. That includes Arkansas, where more than 300,000 Arkansans have coverage through the private option, the state's unique version of Medicaid expansion. /more/

A North Carolina vote should send a message to Arkansas about discriminating against gay people. /more/

In a press conference this morning at Galaxy Furniture in North Little Rock's Argenta District, Gov. Hutchinson congratulated filmmakers Graham Gordy and Daniel Campbell, as well as Executive Producer Gary Newton on the start-up's first feature film, "Antiquities." /more/

Gov. Asa Hutchinson presented the legislature with his proposed budget for the state of Arkansas this morning, outlining a plan that would include a $50 million tax cut, a significant increase in child welfare spending and no money added to the General Improvement Fund. /more/

Gov. Asa Hutchinson is talking budget this morning. Benji Hardy is on hand and will report later, but he sends word that the governor has included no surprlus set aside for a "General Improvement Fund," for either him or the legislature. /more/

A couple of Arkansas Republican legislators rise to the defense of the Duggars. It's a family matter, they say. We beg to differ.

40/29 TV reports that two law officers were shot about 7 a.m. today near Hackett in Sebastian County and at mid-afternoon came word that one of them had died. Later in the day a suspect was taken into custody in the shooting.

Not that it will do much good, but Times columnist Ernest Dumas this week provides some useful Founding Father history, plus a little bit of Bible, for how wrong-headed Mike Huckabee, Asa Hutchinson, the Republican legislature and others are in using government to enforce their religious views.

by Max Brantley

May 26, 2015

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Next week a series of meetings on the use of technology to tackle global problems will be held in Little Rock by Club de Madrid — a coalition of more than 100 former democratic former presidents and prime ministers from around the world — and the P80 Group, a coalition of large public pension and sovereign wealth funds founded by Prince Charles to combat climate change. The conference will discuss deploying existing technologies to increase access to food, water, energy, clean environment, and medical care.

Plus, recipes from the Times staff.

Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) was on "Capitol View" on KARK, Channel 4, this morning, and among other things that will likely inspire you to yell at your computer screen, he said he expects someone in the legislature to file a bill to do ... something about changing the name of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.

So fed up was young Edgar Welch of Salisbury, N.C., that Hillary Clinton was getting away with running a child-sex ring that he grabbed a couple of guns last Sunday, drove 360 miles to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., where Clinton was supposed to be holding the kids as sex slaves, and fired his AR-15 into the floor to clear the joint of pizza cravers and conduct his own investigation of the pedophilia syndicate of the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state.

There is almost nothing real about "reality TV." All but the dullest viewers understand that the dramatic twists and turns on shows like "The Bachelor" or "Celebrity Apprentice" are scripted in advance. More or less like professional wrestling, Donald Trump's previous claim to fame.

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The Arkansas Supreme Court today upheld state statutes that mandate a court order to list parent names on a birth certificate other than the biological mother and father. The Court threw out the ruling of Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Tim Fox, who found last year that the state Health Department had violated the Constitution by refusing to list both parent names of children of same-sex couples (the children of the three couples who were plaintiffs in the case were conceived via sperm donation).